SpaceX, Europe's China Problem, and the Populist Backlash | Patrick Boyle

In Episode 490 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Patrick Boyle—founder of the quantitative hedge fund Palomar Capital Management, professor of finance at King's College London and Queen Mary University of London, and host of Patrick Boyle on Finance—about the SpaceX IPO and what it reveals about the integrity of America's financial markets, the cult of personality filling the vacuum left by the nation's collapsing institutions, the commercial and fiscal challenges facing Europe's largest economies, and the housing crisis and generational wealth divide driving the appeal of left-wing populism across the developed world.

The first hour opens with the recent SpaceX IPO—how the deal was priced and marketed, the mechanics and share-price consequences of its unusually rapid index inclusion, the small number of shares made available for trading, and the wave of bullish sell-side coverage that accompanied it—before broadening into a discussion of the integrity of America's financial markets and what happens to investor behavior and to the country's cost-of-capital advantage when the institutions tasked with regulating those markets can no longer be trusted to do so. From there the conversation turns to the cult of personality and the rise of powerful figures in industry and politics filling the vacuum left by collapsing institutions, and to the growing appeal of left-wing populists whose policies increasingly resonate with younger voters who feel priced out of the American dream.

The second hour examines the commercial and fiscal challenges facing Europe's largest economies: why the continent has produced no answer to America's large technology platforms, how regulation, energy costs, demographics, and labor rigidity weigh on its growth prospects, and what the flood of cheap Chinese goods, high-end machine tools, and electric vehicles means for European industry and for a Germany that cannot afford to miss yet another technological revolution. They discuss the European security picture, the war in Ukraine, and whether Russia is in any meaningful sense winning it given the human, economic, and demographic toll and its deepening dependence on China. The episode closes with a discussion of the housing crisis, the generational wealth divide, and the political incentives that keep home prices high across the United States, the United Kingdom, and beyond—returning at the end to the appeal of left-wing populism and the prospect of redistributive policies as an inevitable response by fiscally overburdened governments looking for someone to blame.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 07/16/2026